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Venus (mythology)

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For other uses, see Venus (disambiguation).
Venus on seashell, from the Casa di Venus, Pompei. Before 79 AD.
Religion in
ancient Rome
Marcus Aurelius sacrificing
Marcus Aurelius (head covered)
sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Practices and beliefs
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Venus (Latin: [ˈwɛnʊs]) is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity and military victory. She played a key role in many Roman religious festivals. From the third century BC, the increasing Hellenization of Roman upper classes identified her as the equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite which in turn is the copy and the equivalent of the Phoenician goddess Astarte. Roman mythology made her the divine mother of Aeneas, the Trojan ancestor of Rome's founder, Romulus.

Name and attributes

Venus has been described as perhaps "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon",[1] and "an ill-defined and assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite".[2] Venus embodies sex, beauty, enticement, seduction and persuasive female charm among the community of immortal gods; in Latin orthography, her name is indistinguishable from the Latin noun venus ("sexual love" and "sexual desire"), from which it derives.[3]

Her cults may represent the religiously legitimate charm and seduction of the divine by mortals, in contrast to the formal, contractual relations between most members of Rome's official pantheon and the state, and the unofficial, illicit manipulation of divine forces through magic.[4][5] The ambivalence of her function is suggested in the etymological relationship of the root *venes- with Latin venenum (poison, venom), in the sense of "a charm, magic philtre".[6]

In myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life. Her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery. Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection. She is essentially assimilative and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions, She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes; in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue.[7]

Festivals

See also: Roman festivals

Venus was offered official (state-sponsored) cult in certain festivals of the Roman calendar. Her sacred month was April (Latin Mensis Aprilis) which Roman etymologists understood to derive from aperire, "to open," with reference to the springtime blossoming of trees and flowers.[8]

Bronze figurine of Venus

Veneralia (April 1) was held in honour of Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"), and Fortuna Virilis (Virile or strong Good Fortune), whose cult was probably by far the older of the two. Venus Verticordia was invented in 220 BC, during the last tears of Rome's Punic Wars, in response to advice from a Sibylline oracle,[9] when a series of prodigies was taken to signify divine displeasure at sexual offenses among Romans of every category and class, including several men and three Vestal Virgins.[10] Her statue was dedicated by a young woman, chosen as the most pudica (sexually pure) in Rome by a committee of Roman matrons. At first, this statue was probably housed within Fortuna Virilis' temple, perhaps as divine reinforcement against the perceived moral and religious failings of its cult. In 114 BC Venus Verticordia was given her own temple.[11] She was meant to persuade Romans of both sexes and every class, whether married or unmarried, to cherish the traditional sexual proprieties and morality known to please the gods and benefit the State. During her rites, her cult image was taken from her temple to the men's baths, where it was undressed and washed in warm water by her female attendants, then garlanded with myrtle. Women and men asked Venus Verticordia's help in affairs of the heart, sex, betrothal and marriage. For Ovid, Venus's acceptance of the epithet and its attendant responsibilities represented a change of heart in the goddess herself.[12]

Vinalia urbana (April 23), a wine festival shared by Venus and Jupiter, king of the gods. Venus was patron of "profane" wine, for everyday human use. Jupiter was patron of the strongest, purest, sacrificial grade wine, and controlled the weather on which the autumn grape-harvest would depend. At this festival, men and women alike drank the new vintage of ordinary, non-sacral wine in honour of Venus, whose powers had provided humankind with this gift. Upper-class women gathered at Venus's Capitoline temple, where a libation of the previous year's vintage, sacred to Jupiter, was poured into a nearby ditch.[13] Common girls (vulgares puellae) and prostitutes gathered at Venus' temple just outside the Colline gate, where they offered her myrtle, mint, and rushes concealed in rose-bunches and asked her for "beauty and popular favour", and to be made "charming and witty".[14]

Vinalia Rustica (August 19), originally a rustic Latin festival of wine, vegetable growth and fertility. This was almost certainly Venus' oldest festival and was associated with her earliest known form, Venus Obsequens. Kitchen gardens and market-gardens, and presumably vineyards were dedicated to her.[15] Roman opinions differed on whose festival it was. Varro insists that the day was sacred to Jupiter, whose control of the weather governed the ripening of the grapes; but the sacrificial victim, a female lamb (agna), may be evidence that it once belonged to Venus alone.[16][17]

Private cults and everyday life

Images of Venus have been found in domestic murals, mosaics and household shrines (lararia). Petronius, in his Satyricon, places an image of Venus among the Lares of the freedman Trimalchio's lararium.[18] Prospective brides offered Venus a gift "before the wedding"; the nature of the gift, and its timing, are unknown. Some Roman sources say that girls who come of age offer their toys to Venus; it is unclear where the offering is made, and others say this gift is to the Lares.[19]

In dice-games, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as "Venus".

Sacred signs

Venus's sacred signs included water, roses and above all, myrtle, which the Romans cultivated as an originally exotic import with long-established connections to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Myrtle was admired for its white, sweetly scented flowers, its aromatic, evergreen leaves and medical-magical properties. It was used to cleanse and purify, to avert the evil eye, and to treat various ailments, including infertility and diminished libido. Myrtle was gradually assimilated to Rome's native Venus. An existing Roman cult to the ancient Romano-Etruscan water-goddess Cloacina, in which myrtle was employed as a purifier, gave rise to Venus Cloacina. Roman folk-etymology connected myrtle (Latin murtos) to an ancient, obscure goddess Murcia, later identified by Pliny as "Venus of the Myrtles, whom we now call Murcia".[20] In the Roman ovation, a lesser form of Roman triumph, generals wore a myrtle crown to purify themselves and their armies of blood-guilt; the ovation was assimilated to Venus Victrix ("Victorious Venus"), who was held to have granted and purified its relatively "easy" victory.[21][22]

Myrtle's cleansing effects were anciently associated with chastity. Through association with Venus as a goddess of fertility, seduction and unbridled libido, it was also considered an aphrodisiac. The female pudendum, particularly the clitoris, was known as murtos (myrtle); wine tinctured with myrtle oil was thought particularly suitable for women.[23] Venus played an essential role at Roman prenuptial rites and wedding nights but the marriage rite itself was a serious and solemn affair; it belonged to Juno, not Venus, so Roman custom forbade the use of myrtle in bridal crowns. The rites to Bona Dea ("The Good Goddess", who was also considered a "Women's goddess") excluded myrtle, Venus and everything male. The wine used at these rites was not Venus' ordinary, everyday wine but Jupiter's wine, the strongest, sacrificial-grade otherwise reserved for the Roman gods and Roman men. With all signs of Venus excluded, along with everything male, the women could get virtuously, religiously drunk.[24]

Roses were a sign of Venus, offered in her Porta Collina rites.[25]

Temples

In the late Roman Republican era, Vitruvius recommends that any new temple to Venus be sited according to rules laid down by the Etruscan haruspices, and built "near to the gate" of the city, where it would be less likely to contaminate "the matrons and youth with the influence of lust". He finds the Corinthian style, slender, elegant, enriched with ornamental leaves and surmounted by volutes, appropriate to Venus' character and disposition.[26] Vitruvius recommends the widest possible spacing between the temple columns, producing a light and airy space; and he offers Venus's temple in Caesar's forum as an example of how not to do it; the densely spaced, thickset columns darken the interior, hide the temple doors and crowd the walkways, so that matrons who wish to honour the goddess must enter her temple in single file, rather than arm-in arm.[27]

Development

Roman coin featuring Crispina, wife of Commodus on the front and Venus on the back.

The earliest known cult to Venus in Rome was dedicated on August 15, 293 BC to Venus Obsequens, ("Propitious Venus") in fulfillment of a vow made by Q. Fabius Gurges, supposedly in the heat of battle, in return for his victory over the Samnites. According to tradition, the temple and cult were funded by fines imposed on Roman women for sexual misdemeanours. Its rites and character were probably influenced by or based on Greek Aphrodite's cults, already diffused in various forms throughout Italian Magna Graeca. The dedication date connects this form of Venus to the Vinalia festival.[28][29]

A second cult to Venus was created during the opening episodes of the Second Punic War between Rome, Carthage and their respective allies. After Rome's catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, the Sibylline oracle suggested that the so-called Venus of Eryx (Venus Erycina), who belonged to Carthage's Sicilian allies, might be persuaded to change her allegiance. In 217 BC the Romans laid siege to Eryx, captured the goddess' image and brought it to Rome. Once there, this "foreign Venus", who probably combined elements of Aphrodite and a more warlike Carthaginian-Phoenician Astarte, was shorn of her more overtly Carthaginian characteristics and installed as one of Rome's twelve Dii consentes in a temple on the Capitoline Hill.[30][31] As Rome's foundation myth made Venus-Aphrodite the divine ancestor of the Roman people, this may have been understood as a homecoming, rather than arrival. Rome eventually defeated Carthage; thereafter, Venus was firmly connected both to Rome's growing political and military hegemony and its mythical Trojan past.[32] Venus' links with Troy can be traced (via Aphrodite) to the epic, mythic history of the Trojan War, and the Judgement of Paris, in which the Trojan prince Paris chose Aphrodite over Hera and Athena, setting off a train of events that led to war between the Greeks and Trojans, and eventually to Troy's destruction. In Rome's foundation myth, this victorious Venus was the divine mother of the Trojan prince Aeneas, and thus a divine ancestor of the Roman people as a whole, in her form as Venus Genetrix.[33] Another temple to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity[34] was established in a traditionally plebeian district just outside the Colline Gate, outside the pomerium.[35]

Towards the end of the Roman republic, some leading Romans laid more personal claims to Venus' favour. Sulla adopted Felix as a surname, acknowledging his debt to heaven-sent good fortune and his particular debt to Venus Felix, for his extraordinarily fortunate political and military career.[36] His protege Pompey competed for Venus' favours. He celebrated his triumph of 54 BC with coins that showed her crowned with triumphal laurels, and built a lavishly appointed theatre and temple complex dedicated to Venus Victrix.[37] Pompey's erstwhile ally and later opponent Julius Caesar went still further, claiming the favours of Venus Victrix in his military success and Venus Genetrix as a personal, divine ancestress – apparently a long-standing family tradition among the Julii. Caesar's heir, Augustus, adopted both claims as evidence of his inherent fitness for office and divine approval of his rule.[38] Augustus' new temple to Mars Ultor, divine father of Rome's legendary founder Romulus, would have underlined the point, with the image of avenging Mars "almost certainly" accompanied by that of his divine consort Venus, and possibly a statue of the deceased and deified Caesar.[39]

In 135 AD the Emperor Hadrian inaugurated a temple to Venus Felix (Lucky Venus) and the goddess Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) on Rome's Velian Hill, making Venus the protective genetrix of the entire Roman state, its people and fortunes. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome.[40]

Epithets of Venus

Like other major Roman deities, Venus was ascribed a number of epithets that referred to her different cult aspects and roles. Her "original powers seem to have been extended largely by the fondness of the Romans for folk-etymology, and by the prevalence of the religious idea nomen-omen which sanctioned any identifications made in this way."[41]

Venus Caelestis (Celestial or Heavenly Venus), used from the 2nd century AD for Venus as an aspect of a syncretised supreme goddess. Venus Caelestis is the earliest known Roman recipient of a taurobolium (a form of bull sacrifice), performed at her shrine in Pozzuoli on 5 October 134. This form of the goddess, and the taurobolium, are associated with the "Syrian Goddess", understood as a late equivalent to Astarte, or the Roman Magna Mater.[42]

Venus Calva ("Venus the bald one"), a possibly legendary form of Venus, attested by post Classical Roman writings which offer several traditions to explain this appearance and epithet. In one, it commemorates the virtuous offer by Roman matrons of their own hair to make bowstrings during a siege of Rome. In another, king Ancus Marcius wife and other Roman women lost their hair during an epidemic; in hope of its restoration, women unaffected by the affliction sacrificed their own hair to Venus.[43]

Venus Cloacina ("Venus the Purifier"); a fusion of Venus with the Etruscan water goddess Cloacina, who had an ancient shrine above the outfall of the Cloaca Maxima, originally a stream, later covered over to function as Rome's main sewer. The shrine contained a statue of Venus, whose rites were probably meant to purify the culvert's polluted waters and noxious airs.[44] Pliny the Elder, remarking Venus as a goddess of union and reconciliation, identifies the shrine with a legendary episode in Rome's earliest history, when the warring Romans and Sabines, carrying branches of myrtle, met there to make peace.[45]

Venus Erycina ("Venus of Eryx"), from Sicily. She was brought to Rome and given temples on the Capitoline Hill and outside the Porta Collina. She embodied "impure" love, and was the patron goddess of prostitutes.[citation needed]

Venus Felix ("Lucky Venus"), her cult tile at her temple on the Esquiline Hill and at Hadrian's Venus Felix et Roma Aeterna on the Via Sacra. This epithet is also used for a specific sculpture at the Vatican Museums.

Venus Genetrix ("Mother Venus"), as a goddess of motherhood and domesticity, with a festival on September 26, and as ancestress of the Roman people. She was claimed as direct ancestress of the Julian gens in particular; Julius Caesar dedicated a Temple of Venus Genetrix to her in 46 BC. This name has attached to an iconological type of statue of Aphrodite/Venus.

Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar, Rome.

Venus Kallipygos ("Venus with the pretty bottom"), worshiped at Syracuse.

Venus Libertina ("Venus the Freedwoman"), probably arising through the semantic similarity and cultural inks between libertina (as "a free woman") and lubentina (possibly meaning "pleasurable" or "passionate"). Further titles or variants acquired by Venus through the same process, or through orthographic variance, include Libentia, Lubentina, and Lubentini. Venus Libitina links Venus to a patron-goddess of funerals and undertakers, Libitina; a temple was dedicated to Venus Libitina in Libitina's grove on the Esquiline Hill, "hardly later than 300 BC."[46]

Venus Murcia ("Venus of the Myrtle") was an epithet that merged the goddess with the little-known deity Murcia or Murtia. Murcia was associated with Rome's Mons Murcia, and had a shrine in the Circus Maximus. Some sources associate her with the myrtle-tree. Christian writers described her as a goddess of sloth and laziness.[47]

Venus Obsequens ("Graceful Venus" or "Indulgent Venus"), Venus' first attested Roman epithet, and used in the dedication of her first Roman temple, sited somewhere at the foot of the Aventine Hill near the Circus Maximus. The temple was dedicated on August 19 in the late 3rd century BC during the Third Samnite War by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges, and played a central role in the Vinalia Rustica. It was supposedly funded by fines imposed on women found guilty of adultery.

Venus Urania ("Heavenly Venus") was an epithet used as the title of a book by Basilius von Ramdohr, a relief by Pompeo Marchesi, and a painting by Christian Griepenkerl. (cf. Aphrodite Urania.)

Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"). See Veneralia in this article and main article, Veneralia.

Venus Victrix ("Venus the Victorious") was an aspect of the armed Aphrodite that Greeks had inherited from the East, where the goddess Ishtar "remained a goddess of war, and Venus could bring victory to a Sulla or a Caesar."[48] Pompey, Sulla's protege, vied with his patron and with Caesar for public recognition as her protege. In 55 BC he dedicated a temple to her at the top of his theater in the Campus Martius. She had a shrine on the Capitoline Hill, and festivals on August 12 and October 9. A sacrifice was annually dedicated to her on the latter date. In neo-classical art, her epithet as Victrix is often used in the sense of 'Venus Victorious over men's hearts' or in the context of the Judgement of Paris (e.g. Canova's Venus Victrix, a half-nude reclining portrait of Pauline Bonaparte).

Mythology and literature

Further information: Aphrodite

Due to her early association with Aphrodite in the interpretatio graeca, it is hard to establish what characteristics the native Italic Venus may have had. In her earliest forms, as a goddess of vegetation and gardens, she was commonly associated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Etruscan deity Turan, borrowing aspects from each.[clarification needed][49]

As with most other gods and goddesses in Roman mythology, the literary concept of Venus is mantled in whole-cloth borrowings from the literary Greek mythology of her counterpart, Aphrodite. In some Latin mythology Cupid was the son of Venus and Mars, the god of war. At other times, or in parallel myths and theologies, Venus was understood to be the consort of Vulcan. Virgil, in compliment to his patron Augustus and the gens Julia, embellished an existing connection between Venus, whom Julius Caesar had adopted as his protectress, and Aeneas. Vergil's Aeneid has Venus lead Aeneas to Latium in her heavenly form, as the morning star, shining brightly before him in the daylight sky.[50]

In the interpretatio romana of the Germanic pantheon during the early centuries AD, Venus became identified with the Germanic goddess Frijjo, giving rise to the loan translation "Friday" for dies Veneris. The historical cognate of the dawn goddess in Germanic tradition, however, would be Ostara.

In art

Venus de Milo at the Louvre

Classical art

Roman and Hellenistic art produced many variations on the goddess, often based on the Praxitlean type Aphrodite of Cnidus. Many female nudes from this period of sculpture whose subjects are unknown are in modern art history conventionally called 'Venus'es, even if they originally may have portrayed a mortal woman rather than operated as a cult statue of the goddess.

Examples include:

Art in the classical tradition

Venus became a popular subject of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period in Europe. As a "classical" figure for whom nudity was her natural state, it was socially acceptable to depict her unclothed. As the goddess of sexuality, a degree of erotic beauty in her presentation was justified, which appealed to many artists and their patrons. Over time, venus came to refer to any artistic depiction in post-classical art of a nude woman, even when there was no indication that the subject was the goddess.

The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli c. 1485–1486.

In the field of prehistoric art, since the discovery in 1908 of the so-called "Venus of Willendorf" small Neolithic sculptures of rounded female forms have been conventionally referred to as Venus figurines. Although the name of the actual deity is not known, the knowing contrast between the obese and fertile cult figures and the classical conception of Venus has raised resistance to the terminology.

The Birth of Venus, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)

Medieval and modern literature and music

In Wagner's opera Tannhäuser, which draws on the medieval German legend of the knight and poet Tannhäuser, Venus lives beneath the Venusberg mountain. Tannhauser breaks his knightly vows by spending a year there with Venus, under her enchantment. When he emerges, he has to seek penance for his sins.

See also

References

  1. ^ Schilling, R., p. 146.
  2. ^ Eden, p. 458ff. Eden is discussing possible associations between the Venus of Eryx and the brassica species Eruca sativa (known in Europe as Rocket), which the Romans considered an aphrodisiac.
  3. ^ Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1879, "Venus", (B, Transf., at perseus.org. It has connections to venerari (to honour, to try to please) and venia (grace, favour) through a possible common root in an Indo-European *wenes-, comparable to Sanskrit vanas- "lust, desire". See Etymonline link (Harper). See also William W.Skeat Etymological Dictionary of the English Language New York, 2011 (first ed. 1882) s. v. venerable, venereal, venial. The Vedic goddess Ushas is linked to Latin "Venus" by the Vedic Sanskrit epithet vanas- "(female) loveliness; longing, desire". Their common Proto-Indo-European root is assumed as *wen- "to desire"). "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000". Retrieved 2008-02-16.
  4. ^ R. Schilling La religion romaine de Venus depuis les origines jusqu'au temps d' Auguste Paris, 1954, pp. 13–64
  5. ^ R. Schilling "La relation Venus venia", Latomus, 21, 1962, pp. 3–7
  6. ^ Linked through an adjectival form *venes-no-: William W. Skeat ibid. s.v. "venom"
  7. ^ Staples, Ariadne, From Good Goddess to vestal virgins: sex and category in Roman religion, Routledge, 1998, pp. 12, 15-16, 24 - 26, 149 - 150: Varro's theology identifies Venus with water as an aspect of the female principle. To generate life, the watery matrix of the womb requires the virile warmth of fire. To sustain life, water and fire must be balanced; excess of either one, or their mutual antagonism, are unproductive or destructive.
  8. ^ The origin is unknown, but it might derive from Apru, an Etruscan form of Greek Aphrodite's name.[1]
  9. ^ Either the Sibylline Books (Valerius Maximus, 8. 15. 12) or the Cumaean Sibyl (Ovid, Fasti, 4. 155 - 62.
  10. ^ See Staples, Ariadne, From Good Goddess to vestal virgins: sex and category in Roman religion, Routledge, 1998, pp. 105 - 9.
  11. ^ Carter, Jesse Benedict, "The Cognomina of the Goddess 'Fortuna,'" Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association , Vol. 31, 1900, p. 66. [2]
  12. ^ Langlands, p. 59, citing Ovid, Fasti, 4. 155 - 62. Romans considered personal ethics or mentality to be functions of the heart.
  13. ^ Olivier de Cazanove, "Jupiter, Liber et le vin latin", Revue de l'histoire des religions, 1988, Vol. 205, Issue 205-3, pp. 245-265 persee
  14. ^ Staples, p. 122, citing Ovid, Fasti, 4,863 - 872.
  15. ^ Vegetable-growers may have been involved in the dedications as a corporate guild: see Eden, P.T., "Venus and the Cabbage" Hermes, 91, (1963) p. 451.
  16. ^ For associations of kind between Roman deities and their sacrificial victims, see Victima.
  17. ^ Lipka, Michael, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach, BRILL, 2009, p. 42; citing Varro, Lingua Latina, 6. 16; Varro's explicit denial that the festival belongs to Venus implies his awareness of opposite scholarly and commonplace opinion. Lipka offers this apparent contradiction as an example of two Roman cults that offer "complementary functional foci".
  18. ^ Kaufmann-Heinimann, in Rüpke (ed), 197–8.
  19. ^ Hersch, Karen K., The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 66 - 67.
  20. ^ Eden, pp. 457 - 8, citing Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 15, 119 - 121. Murcia had a shrine at the Circus Maximus.
  21. ^ In the Triumph, the general was drawn in a four-horse chariot before his troops. He wore Jupiter's laurel crown, and was applauded as Jupiter's embodiment for the day – or a king, by any other name. See Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press, 2007.
  22. ^ Brouwer, Henrik H. J., Bona Dea, The Sources and a Description of the Cult, Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain, 110, BRILL, 1989: citing Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 23, 152 - 158, and Book 15, 125.
  23. ^ Versnel, H. S., Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, Vol. 2, Transition and reversal in myth and ritual, BRILL, 1994, p. 262 [3]
  24. ^ Versnel, H.S., "The Festival for Bona Dea and the Thesmophoria", Greece & Rome, Second Series, 39, 1, (Apr., 1992), p. 44, citing Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 20. Though Venus played a part in prenuptial rites, the wedding and the state of marriage were the domain of Juno. For the total exclusion of myrtle (and therefore Venus) at Bona Dea's rites, see Bona Dea article.
  25. ^ Eden, P.T., Venus and the Cabbage, Hermes, 91, (1963), p. 456, citing Ovid, Fasti 4, 869-870, cf. I35-I38; Ovid describes the rites observed in the early Imperial era, when the temple environs were part of the Gardens of Sallust.
  26. ^ Immediately after these remarks, Vitruvius prescribes the best positioning for temples to Venus' two divine consorts, Vulcan and Mars. Vulcan's should be outside the city, to reduce the dangers of fire, which is his element; Mars' too should be outside the city, so that "no armed frays may disturb the peace of the citizens, and that this divinity may, moreover, be ready to preserve them from their enemies and the perils of war." Book 1, 7, 2.
  27. ^ The widely spaced, open style preferred by Vitruvius is eustylos. The densely pillared style he criticises is pycnostylos. Book 3, 1, 5.
  28. ^ Eden, p. 456.
  29. ^ Schilling, R. La Religion romaine de Venus, BEFAR, Paris, 1954, p.87, suggests that Venus began as an abstraction of personal qualities, later assuming Aphrodite's attributes.
  30. ^ Beard et al, Vol 1., pp. 80, 83: see also Livy Ab Urbe Condita 23.31.
  31. ^ Orlin, in Rüpke (ed), p. 62.
  32. ^ The Punic Wars saw many similar introductions of cult (see Beard et al, Vol. 1, p. 80), including the cult of Magna Mater from Phrygia, who also had mythical links to Troy.
  33. ^ Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press, 2007, p. 23.
  34. ^ Lipka, Michael, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach, BRILL, 2009, pp. 72 3: Lipka gives a foundation date of 181 BC for Venus' Colline temple.
  35. ^ Orlin, Eric M., "Foreign Cults in Republican Rome: Rethinking the Pomerial Rule", Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 47 (2002), pp. 4, 8, 14.
  36. ^ Plutarch's original Greek translates this adopted surname, Felix, as Epaphroditus (Aphrodite's beloved); see Plutarch, Sulla 19.9.
  37. ^ Beard, 2007, pp. 22 - 23.
  38. ^ Orlin, in Rüpke (ed), pp. 67 - 69: "At the battle of Pharsalus, Caesar also vowed a temple, in best republican fashion, to Venus Victrix, almost as if he were summoning Pompey’s protectress to his side in the manner of an evocatio." Three years after Pompey's defeat at the battle, Caesar dedicated his new Roman Forum, complete with a temple to his ancestor Venus Genetrix, "apparently in fulfillment of the vow". The goddess helped provide a divine aura for her descendant, preparing the way for Caesar's own cult as a divus and the formal institution of the Roman Imperial cult.
  39. ^ Beard et al., Vol 1, pp. 199 - 200.
  40. ^ See James Grout, Encyclopedia Romana, "Temple of Venus and Rome," online. See also Beard et al, Vol. 1, pp. 257 - 8, 260.
  41. ^ See Eden, p. 457. For further exposition of nomen-omen (or nomen est omen see Del Bello, Davide, Forgotten paths: etymology and the allegorical mindset, The Catholic University of America Press, 2007, p.52 ff. [4]
  42. ^ Turcan, p. 141 - 143.
  43. ^ R. Schilling La religion romaine de Venus depuis les origines jusqu'au temps d'August Paris, 1954, pp. 83–89: "L'origine probable du cult de Venus". Ashby (1929) finds the existence of a temple to Venus Calva "very doubtful"; see Samuel Ball Platner (completed and revised by Thomas Ashby), A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London, Oxford University Press, 1929, p551.[5]
  44. ^ Eden, p. 457, citing Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 15, 119 - 121.
  45. ^ Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 15, 119, cited in Wagenvoort, p. 180.
  46. ^ See Eden, p. 457. Varro rationalises the connections as "lubendo libido, libidinosus ac Venus Libentina et Libitina" (Lingua Latina, 6, 47).
  47. ^ Augustine, De civitate Dei, IV. 16; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, IV. 9.
  48. ^ Thus Walter Burkert, in Homo Necans (1972) 1983:80, noting C. Koch on "Venus Victrix" in Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 8 A860-64.
  49. ^ Questia.com
  50. ^ Vergil, Aeneid, Book and line required

Sources

  • Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Champeaux, J. (1987). Fortuna. Recherches sur le culte de la Fortuna à Rome et dans le monde romain des origines à la mort de César. II. Les Transformations de Fortuna sous le République. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome. (pp. 378–395
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